Eyes Wide Open
by RowanDarkstar
Summary: 'Look at her,' he said.


**DISCLAIMER:** "Once Upon a Time" and all its wonderful characters belong to ABC and Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, etc.. I borrow them only with love.

Beta love to choraii, helenhighwater7, and annienau08, who may or may not have actually "beta-ed" (though she totally did), depending upon one's definition *g* ::smooches you all::

Written for LJ's "onceuponabingo". Fill for prompt - "Emma/Daniel - dreams"

**"Touch"**  
by  
Rowan Darkstar  
Copyright (c) 2012

"Look at her," he said.

And she wanted to reply, "I _have_ looked at her," as any stubborn little orphan girl like herself was wont to do. But the truth was she had not looked. She had not looked at all.

Emma knew she was dreaming. Kind of. The lines grew fuzzy when you turned out to be Prince Charming's daughter and Snow White wanted to braid your hair. Fuzzier still when the Evil Queen turned out to be a pretty good mother. To your son.

"Look at her," the man said again. His accent was soft, soothing. Emma could imagine his gentle tones being a welcome and intimate comfort on a cold and lonely night. What she could not imagine was Regina leaning into those whispers, closing her eyes, and wanting nothing more than a gentle life of horses and children and warm smiles. No apples. No poison. No curse.

Then again, she hadn't looked. Not really.

He had taken his seat beside her on this bench, as though she met him on her lunch hour every day, as though they had been acquaintances for years. Yet he had introduced himself. "I'm Daniel," was all he had said. And she had known. He was _that_ Daniel. Of course he was.

The park around them was one she had never seen. A hillside overlooking the valley that must have...must have led down to Storybrooke. The stables lay not far behind. Emma had never been to the stables. Only rich girls got to ride horses.

Daniel's hair blew in the light wind, long bangs ruffling across his brow. His eyes were grey-blue. Like the blur of water-sky from the Maine coastline. He was all light and softness where Regina was all flash and contrast.

Daniel gazed upon Emma with a stillness that intensified his words.

"I don't...I don't understand what you want," Emma said. She was dressed in a skirt she had not worn in years, and leggings and boots she had given away back in Boston. But the gloves were new, bought at the outdoor clothing shop on Main, just a block from Granny's. Emma always felt underdressed next to Regina. Even when Regina wasn't there.

"You're the only one who can see. But you have to look," he said, arm resting casually on the back of the bench as he turned to face her. His boots were worn and slouching. "She hides," he said. "She's always hidden. Even I had to look twice...to see..."

"See wha...What do...what do I..."

"The others," Daniel said, "they can see nothing but the darkness. The darkness that my Regina was...drowning in...for a long time. I can't blame them. For all they have been through. All she has put them through. But she is not the darkness. She is victim to it."

"Ya know, she's awfully comfortable with it." The words were across Emma's lips before she could catch herself.

Daniel did not flinch. "She is," he said simply. "Great passion can be channeled in many directions. Certain people in Regina's life knew that, all too well. Great pain can...change people. Regina feels things very deeply. She always has. Her mother fed off of that. Through the years...others did as well. I wanted to protect her. I wanted..." Daniel fell quiet for several breaths. His gaze drifted out over the great distance to the town.

Great distances made Emma dizzy. She belonged in cities, where near-sightedness was all you needed to survive.

"Regina has far more love to give than even you could imagine, Miss Swan. If once she loves you...truly loves you...it is for life."

"Didn't she used to love my mother?"

Daniel turned to her then, perhaps a bit surprised by her forward manner. But he matched her tight-lipped defiance with a lowering of his head and a kind smile. After all, this was a man who had long stood up to Regina. "You will understand in the end," he said.

Emma scoffed, gave an indelicate snort. "That's it? That's your explanation? You're just going to tell me 'love and hate are two sides of the same coin', like you're a fairytale bumper sticker or something? I don't buy it. There's no reality in which I would ever try to kill Henry. Or any kid. No matter what happened."

Daniel did not respond. His focus had settled on a far distant rider on a chestnut steed.

Emma looked away.

"Our children...they would have been like you, you know." The air stilled as Daniel's fingers drummed on his thigh. The sound seemed unnaturally loud.

Emma didn't understand. And then she did. "You loved her that much? Regina? Like...like my father loves Mary Margaret? True love?"

Daniel's eyes narrowed, and a shimmer of wind or heat moved between the two on the bench, like a ghost or a touch long forgotten.

Daniel nodded. "She is the most beautiful person I have ever known. In every sense of the word. With Regina I was...everything I had ever aspired to be."

Emma wanted to say, "I'm sorry," because he looked so lost. So alone. She wanted to understand, but the words seemed all wrong. Love was not a tragedy. Death was. "Do you know how many hearts she's taken?" she said. "Because I don't think even she does."

The silence stretched for more than a heartbeat. Less than a life. "No," Daniel said softly, "I doubt she does."

Wind and shuffling leaves and a horse breaking into a canter in the distance.

"You're the product of true love, Emma," Daniel said, his tone regaining its quiet intensity. "True love is the strongest, the most unifying power in the world. Any place true love has touched, you can make connections that others cannot. You can see truths."

Emma shook her head. "I don't...I'm not so sure I can. I think maybe..."

But before she could finish untangling her thoughts, Daniel moved with a bit of a whirl and swish of his draping clothes and pressed a cool palm to Emma's forehead. In an instant she was swept from the hillside, cascading through a rush of sensation and imagery that nearly overwhelmed her senses. One moment after another tumbled through her, flesh and bone and spirit. A mesh of observation and experience and emotion that left her reaching blindly for a grounding point and finding no purchase.

Regina standing beside a well-groomed horse, holding the reins and flashing a radiant smile that made Emma's guts feel like warm chocolate.

Henry jerking awake in the shadows of his room, fear and isolation burning through his stomach. Falling into warm arms. A hoarse and bone-familiar voice soothing him with sound as much as words, burying his face in silk robes and soft breasts and feeling safety and trust and home.

Regina clinging to someone's lapels, and her voice throaty and deep and broken. "Please...please, please, please..."

Henry at no more than four years old, riding a small red bicycle past the front gates of Regina's house and a rush of love that Emma understood and did not understand all in the same moment.

Screaming. Dark stone. Long gown around her legs and a curl of her lip that meant numbness and blood-deep satisfaction and cold. Heels on marble and a purple rush in her veins.

Regina...so young...lit by only moonlight and a distant lantern, trying to speak, carrying herself like she wished to appear regal, capable, unaffected. Gentle fingers closing over her wrist, whisper-kissing her skin. And Regina's elegant profile as she melted into tears, chest shaking beneath her silk gown, fingers cradled to her stomach. The pain was almost unbearable. Whispered words...,"What did she do? What did she do to you?"

Standing in the schoolyard. The Storybrooke schoolyard Emma knew. An image of Mary-Margaret with soft eyes. Speaking. Then walking away. And it was so hard to breathe. Ripped raw and shelterless in the winter wind. Echoes and fragments of words in her head..."won't make you happy...such incredible loneliness..." Curled beneath heavy blankets in a cavernous stone room, knees hugged to her chest. The world spinning around her and nothing making sense.

Regina Mills, in a trench coat and black heels, walking down the sidewalk, past the Storybrooke hardware store. Gaze lowered and distant, wind chilling her throat and paling her complexion. The cold was like an ache in Emma's chest. The need was overwhelming. Catching fragments of Daniel - his scent, his texture, his manner of movement. The desperate all-consuming need to reach out, to cradle a hand to Regina's cold cheek. To wrap her in his...her...his arms. To warm her from the cold. Regina did not break her pace. She drew a single, uneven breath, pulled her teeth across her lip. And Emma could swear she caught a flash of tears in Regina's eyes. In the middle of town.

_"Mother!"_

"Oh, my God!" Emma gasped at the flash of sunlight. She was sitting on the bench, again. Daniel beside her. The chestnut horse trotted in the distance. Rocinante? What? She was panting for breath. Her skin felt hot, hypersensitized. "What the hell was that?" she stammered.

Daniel remained comfortably motionless in the face of her adrenaline. He held her gaze until she quieted enough to focus on his words. He said simply, "Look at her."

And he was gone.

Emma Swan dreamt other dreams before she woke. She told herself over coffee and a bear claw that the subconscious was an inexplicable realm. She spent the morning catching up on paperwork and talking to anyone who would distract her. She lit a candle on her desk to ward off the grey skies.

She tried to forget.

#


End file.
